Early Thoughts on Flashpoint

[UncleGamer]

So only doing a career play through so far. Decided on un-modded while we wait for the modding to be sorted out.

The Random Pilots is nice, wish there had been Random Mechs or at least an option for random. Also have tried three starts and not single higher level pilot. Is that even a chance of happening?

The Career map is crazy with how the difficulty level is all over the place. half skulls sitting next to three skull systems. This is bad and good at the same time. Bad as you need to hunt for early mission locations, good because it feels like it should in a more lore based state.

The quality of life improvements in the game are nice, all very subtle and behind the scenes but nice. Also the amazing new cut scenes are just AWESOME. Especially love watching the Argo retrograde into a planet!

The only real complaint, and not much of one is the whole score system. This forces you to break a bit out of the sandbox and play the game instead. I know you can ignore it and all is well but it is there staring you in the face all the time practically daring you to ignore it. The subliminal slap to the general gamer psychie is real. Would love to see a way to remove it is the player wanted just the sandbox without the score.

I feel like the score system, just as the campaign, is designed to push the player in a certain way. A true sandbox mode does not push in any direction, it lets the player go any way he likes.

Overall very happy with the DLC and patch. Some performance issues I have never seen before but sure they will sort them out.

 

[ronhatch]

The Random Pilots is nice, wish there had been Random Mechs or at least an option for random. Also have tried three starts and not single higher level pilot. Is that even a chance of happening?

In the Q&A prerelease stream, Kiva mentioned that the pilots are never going to be very good. The thinking was that in earlier versions with a chance of a high-level pilot, the player was rewarded for restarting over and over... basically making a behavior that isn't fun the optimal way to play. So now you won't get a high-level pilot ever... and taking what you're given the first time around shouldn't give you a significant advantage or disadvantage.

 

[ronhatch]

Oh, and during another stream, when they stated that the starting mechs are not random... Kiva chimed in with a "yet".

So while we don't know where it falls on the priority list and they always reserve the right to change their mind on what gets released... we DO know that it's a feature that they'd like to see also.

 

[BobaFatt]

I also feel like the biggest need for career mode right now is random mechs. I would love to see a slider bar upon career start where you can pick your starting tonnage anywhere between say 100 and 200 tons and then the AI randomizes your starting mechs.

Although as with anything random there’s gonna be a few people that get really weird starting combos, like a 150 ton starting lance of 4 locusts and a cataphract, or something like that.... which actually sounds kinda fun... but I’m sure some will complain.

I also think it would be fun to only start with 2 or 3 mechs and have to build from there, basicially I just want as many variables to starting as possible so every replay has a different feel.

 

[Amechwarrior]

I think the problems with the rare high skill pilots is the same problem we'd get with random starting 'Mechs. We'd eventually find the list of potential starters and then keep rolling until we got one of the good units if not a great entire Lance.

 

[Fallenkezef]

I want super-hard mode

Start with a full lance of Chargers....

 

[UncleGamer]

I think the problems with the rare high skill pilots is the same problem we'd get with random starting 'Mechs. We'd eventually find the list of potential starters and then keep rolling until we got one of the good units if not a great entire Lance.

There are always those people that are looking for easy mode and they will always find it. There are quite a few of us that would happily accept the challenge of taking what fate hands us and see what we can do with it.

 

[ronhatch]

I think the problems with the rare high skill pilots is the same problem we'd get with random starting 'Mechs. We'd eventually find the list of potential starters and then keep rolling until we got one of the good units if not a great entire Lance.

I suspect it will end up more like the starting location and have a list of possible values that were chosen to be reasonably well balanced.

I would expect it to be possible to have every light and most of the mediums featured in one of the possible starting lances even while keeping the total number of combinations in the single digits.

 

[CSM101]

I want super-hard mode

Start with a full lance of Chargers....

It might not be as bad in this version, since SLAS are support weapons. that's 100 extra damage on melee on an assault that would move as fast as a Kintaro.

 

[Amechwarrior]

I suspect it will end up more like the starting location and have a list of possible values that were chosen to be reasonably well balanced.

I would expect it to be possible to have every light and most of the mediums featured in one of the possible starting lances even while keeping the total number of combinations in the single digits.

It's really the mediums over 45t that would mess up the random start. Right now we get a JR7 and PNT right off the bat, we're basically "done" with the Light progression and looking to acquire a solid medium to move up the skull rating. If you included all of the 40-50t mediums, the 40 and 45t come up short vs all 50t units and basically any 55t is better than all of the others. Even the SHD-2D can get weapons dropped and armor increased in a 0 day customization and just kick everything to death on the first planet before you can deck it out with SRMs from the plentiful Striker/COM-2D population in .5 skull land.

You'd end up cutting out the 55t units from the pool, leaving players to just hunt to the 50t units. The 40t Cicada is just going to get re-rolled and might as well throw that one in the "Light" pool.

Now if you made a selection of hand crafted Lances, to balance out the better 50t+ Mediums, they're still better off with 1 SHD and 3x LCT-1Ms than a VND/BJ and 3x 35t units. They'll easily acquire 35t units in the .5 to 1 skull range even with 5 parts as there are just 3 of them and one is much rarer. This concentrates the good Light salvage to the PNT-9R and JR7-D and you could possibly see one each mission, if not two on some and get one per 1 skull planet. The firepower of the 50t+ units is just too much for that starting .5 -1 skull range. You really just end up with a pool of either the BJ-1 or VND-1R and I think the BJ was the starter medium on one of the early streams.

 

[BobaFatt]

It's really the mediums over 45t that would mess up the random start. Right now we get a JR7 and PNT right off the bat, we're basically "done" with the Light progression and looking to acquire a solid medium to move up the skull rating. If you included all of the 40-50t mediums, the 40 and 45t come up short vs all 50t units and basically any 55t is better than all of the others. Even the SHD-2D can get weapons dropped and armor increased in a 0 day customization and just kick everything to death on the first planet before you can deck it out with SRMs from the plentiful Striker/COM-2D population in .5 skull land.

You'd end up cutting out the 55t units from the pool, leaving players to just hunt to the 50t units. The 40t Cicada is just going to get re-rolled and might as well throw that one in the "Light" pool.

Now if you made a selection of hand crafted Lances, to balance out the better 50t+ Mediums, they're still better off with 1 SHD and 3x LCT-1Ms than a VND/BJ and 3x 35t units. They'll easily acquire 35t units in the .5 to 1 skull range even with 5 parts as there are just 3 of them and one is much rarer. This concentrates the good Light salvage to the PNT-9R and JR7-D and you could possibly see one each mission, if not two on some and get one per 1 skull planet. The firepower of the 50t+ units is just too much for that starting .5 -1 skull range. You really just end up with a pool of either the BJ-1 or VND-1R and I think the BJ was the starter medium on one of the early streams.

All good points. I think if you put a specific tonnage that the entre lance will always add up to, and then sat a limit that no one mech can be more than, say 30 - 35% of the total tonnage. Ideally starting tonnage would be a slider bar between mYbe 100-200 tons, the player picks their starting tonnage and the game rolls for random mechs. Double plus bonus if they ever come out with faction specific mech tables for encounters it could roll on your background faction tables.

So an example of randomly generating a 150 ton lance with the limit at 35% (50 tons) would be:
(We’ll assume we’re rolling for 4 fandoms and #5 will always be a locust that doesn’t count against the total.
- first mech rolled from anything 50 tons or less
- second mech rolled by taking 150, subtracting 2*20 because we need to have enough tonnage for at least locusts for #3 and #4 and subtract the tonnage of mech #1
-3rd mech subtract mech 1 & 2 +20 tons from 150 and roll on everything that weight and smaller
-4th mech you get whatever is the tonnage you have left.

So for example let’s say we roll a centurion first, the formula for mech #2 is 150-20-20-50=60 the cap is 50 tons so you would roll for #2 in anything 50 tons or less, let’s say you rolled a cicada, so the formula for #3 would be 150-50-40-20=40, so the 3rd roll would be for anything 40 tons or less, let’s say you rolled a firestarter. You’d be left with 25 tons for slot #4 which means you’re getting a commando.

But doing it by total lance weight will mean that if you get a strong mech or two you’re others are going to be weaker to compensate.

 

[Amechwarrior]

All good points. I think if you put a specific tonnage that the entre lance will always add up to, and then sat a limit that no one mech can be more than, say 30 - 35% of the total tonnage. Ideally starting tonnage would be a slider bar between mYbe 100-200 tons, the player picks their starting tonnage and the game rolls for random mechs. Double plus bonus if they ever come out with faction specific mech tables for encounters it could roll on your background faction tables.

So an example of randomly generating a 150 ton lance with the limit at 35% (50 tons) would be:
(We’ll assume we’re rolling for 4 fandoms and #5 will always be a locust that doesn’t count against the total.
- first mech rolled from anything 50 tons or less
- second mech rolled by taking 150, subtracting 2*20 because we need to have enough tonnage for at least locusts for #3 and #4 and subtract the tonnage of mech #1
-3rd mech subtract mech 1 & 2 +20 tons from 150 and roll on everything that weight and smaller
-4th mech you get whatever is the tonnage you have left.

So for example let’s say we roll a centurion first, the formula for mech #2 is 150-20-20-50=60 the cap is 50 tons so you would roll for #2 in anything 50 tons or less, let’s say you rolled a cicada, so the formula for #3 would be 150-50-40-20=40, so the 3rd roll would be for anything 40 tons or less, let’s say you rolled a firestarter. You’d be left with 25 tons for slot #4 which means you’re getting a commando.

But doing it by total lance weight will mean that if you get a strong mech or two you’re others are going to be weaker to compensate.

You'd still end up with equal chance of getting that CN9 and your example or 3x CDA and a SDR. One of those is a strong team of a solid 50t and a FS9 to start, the other is instant save deletion.

 

[yrrot]

HBS's general approach, as Kiva puts it, is something like "cultivated procedural content". So rather than randomizing the mechs individually, you'd probably get either 1) a random set of mechs from a predetermined roster of various starting lances, or 2) each slot in the starting lance being randomized within a specific set of mechs (like, you get one random 45-55 ton medium mech, 1 35 ton light, and two 20-35 ton slots, or similar).

Pure random lance might be a fun career challenge, though.

 

[BobaFatt]

You'd still end up with equal chance of getting that CN9 and your example or 3x CDA and a SDR. One of those is a strong team of a solid 50t and a FS9 to start, the other is instant save deletion.

Well as Uncle Gamer said above, there will always be people looking for easy mode. You’ve gotta just ignore that. If there were a half dozen pre selected starting lances you are still going to have a percentage of people deleting saves until they get the one lance you want. And for everyone else that would enjoy the challange randomly generated teams make for a lot more variety than just a group of preselected teams.

 

[Shake Appeal]

The starting lance should be one of each Locust variant and one of each Cicada variant.

 

[MaP_Prime]

I have no issue with the starting lance. Am I thrilled to start with a Spider? No, not really. But that's why I go out into the game world and hunt wild game, I mean mechs, for salvage. My problem is more to do with RNG and what you encounter. I've started two careers so far and each time I started out I wanted to replace my Commando with a Firestarted, but I never ran into enough of them before I started getting medium mechs. I know, weird. Also I really want to try out the Hatchetman and Crab, but again, I never really ran into either of them in large enough amounts when that was important to put either on the field. Hatchetmen seem kinda rare to be honest, I think total I've run into about a half dozen of them. I've only seen two Crabs in the entire game, and they only started showing up when I was more interested in getting heavy mechs then a new 50 tonner. I'm planning on starting a new career mode tonight with 5 pieces needed to salvage with the hopes that it'll result in a longer game allowing me to encounter more of the mechs I'm interested in.

The other RNG issue I have is how the random portions of salvage are being divided up. Lately when I manage to take down a mech to walk away with all of it from the battlefield I always miss out on that last piece when it is given out randomly. That might just be my lukc lately, but it's still really annoying when you grab two pieces of a heavy mech you really want, needing a third, only to see it not portioned out even with max salvage.

 

[Roshirai]

I'd actually like to see this built into the Career Mode character creation, much like how Starsector does it.

Basically, give new careers something like 3-6 starting positions balanced against one another with different pre-generated combinations of starting mechs and pilots. Maybe these options are given in place of the "Career" portion of character creation, or a separate "Outfit" question like the following:


Before you joined up with them, the Marauders were spending their time…

• doing low-risk guard duty for merchant caravans (sturdier mechs, untested pilots)
• taking contracts harassing various pirate groups operating on the Periphery (lighter hit-and-run mechs, more experienced pilots)

…and so on. You could even add harder "barely scraping by after a contract went bad" and/or "struggling under a mountain of debt" starts with less than four/very weak mechs, green pilots and increased starting debt. Dunno how you'd reconcile that with the scoring system, but it's a thought!

 

[yrrot]

@Roshirai now that you mention it, basing the starting mechs somewhat on the background is probably more likely than random chance. That puts it into the player's choice and adds more to it than simple stat min/maxing. Like, sure, you started with +2 gunnery, but you get a vindi instead of a griffin, etc, etc.

Re: scoring system, I don't think any of it is reconciled with the scoring system anyway--difficulty settings don't affect it anyway.

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

I'm playing the Career Mode without paying too much attention to the score. I'm just going to play it like I think I should, and at the end of the 1200 days, just check and see what it is. I might post it on here to see how it might stack up for the heck of it, but I'm not going to worry about it right away. Maybe in a subsequent playthrough I'll try to earn as high a score as possible. I'll see how I feel then.

In the mean time, for this current playthrough, I'll treat the score just like 'Who's Line is it Anyway'...


Welcome To BattleTech Career Mode!



Where The Points Are Made Up,
And The Score Doesn't Matter.

 

[MaP_Prime]

I really wish the career mode timer wasn't there to be honest. Just let career mode be a sandbox where people can play for as long as they like.